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Anthony D'Ambrosio writes at USA Today that marriage seems like a pretty simple concept — fall in love and share your life together. Our great-grandparents did it, our grandparents followed suit, and for many of us, our parents did it as well. So why is marriage so difficult for the millennial generation?
"You want to know why your grandmother and grandfather just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary? Because they weren't scrolling through Instagram worrying about what John ate for dinner. They weren't on Facebook criticizing others. They weren't on vacation sending Snapchats to their friends." According to D'Ambrosio, we've developed relationships with things, not each other. "Ninety-five percent of the personal conversations you have on a daily basis occur through some type of technology. We've removed human emotion from our relationships, and we've replaced it colorful bubbles," writes D'Ambrosio. "We've forgotten how to communicate yet expect healthy marriages. How is it possible to grow and mature together if we barely speak?"
D'Ambrosio writes that another factor is that our desire for attention outweighs our desire to be loved and that social media has given everyone an opportunity to be famous. "Attention you couldn't dream of getting unless you were celebrity is now a selfie away. Post a picture, and thousands of strangers will like it. Wear less clothing, and guess what? More likes," writes D'Ambrosio.
"If you want to love someone, stop seeking attention from everyone because you'll never be satisfied with the attention from one person." Finally D'Ambrosio says the loss of privacy has contributed to the demise of marriage. "We've invited strangers into our homes and brought them on dates with us. We've shown them our wardrobe, drove with them in our cars, and we even showed them our bathing suits," writes D'Ambrosio. "The world we live in today has put roadblocks in the way of getting there and living a happy life with someone. Some things are in our control, and unfortunately, others are not."
(Score: 2, Troll) by Gravis on Saturday April 11 2015, @05:27PM
show me the statistics to back it up or this is just conjecture from an armchair sociologist.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @05:47PM
This arm chair sociologist says what ruined marriage is equal rights for women.
Even earning less than 80% of the average man's salary, that's still 80% more than a stay-at-home mother makes.
Self-sufficiency means options, many fewer women are forced by financial necessity to put up with a bad match.
Now that they have the option to leave, many do.
If social media has any role in it at all, I say its informative - its is easier to consider divorce when you can see all these other people in your extended network doing it too.
(Score: 1) by SubiculumHammer on Saturday April 11 2015, @05:59PM
Enlightened marriage, you mean.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @10:45PM
that's still 80% more than a stay-at-home mother makes
Its not 80% more. Its infinitely more. In fact, its not even defined.
Suppose the stay-at-home mother or woman makes $0.0 = x;
And a working-mother or woman makes $10,000.0 = y;
percentage = (y / x) * 100;
Here, percentage is undefined because:
As the limit x -> 0, the answer goes to infinity.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Saturday April 11 2015, @05:50PM
yeah, I don't buy this either.
my guess is that women are not satisfied with regular guys and they all want some sports hero or GQ model looking guy. media has told them that they 'all deserve a prince charming' and very few guys meet that spec.
same for guys, too; guys seem to want a perfect ten and very few women meet that spec.
finally, the working world steals most of our free time, takes our evenings and weekends and makes us too tired to go out after work. finding a mate is very hard unless you have built-in support systems like churches - and many of us could not care less about church attendance and membership.
so, standards being too unrealistic, short attention span and not enough truly free time could explain a lot of this.
(I know a lot of american guys have given up even trying to find an american girl to marry; they have gone outside the US to find a foreign girl, who is probably going to be less demanding, more loyal, have a longer term view towards things and does not have the disposable mentality that american women tend to have (just my POV, of course).
nothing to do with 'social media', really. more to do with the flood of tv and movies that show people that they need to demand perfection from their mates and anything less is not acceptable ;(
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday April 11 2015, @06:41PM
nothing to do with 'social media', really.
Really?
You substitute your "guess" for a theory that has at least a correlation as a foundation? There has always been a flood of TV and movies, and gossip rags. The difference is people didn't obsess with posting every little detail of their life to 500 of their best "friends".
This isn't the first time this theory has been raised, studied, and published. Each time it is quickly beaten to death. On social media, by social media addicts, quickly and decisively less anyone threaten the value of that upon which their entire life has come to depend.
Nothing to do with social media, from the viewpoint of a social media addict, i'd wager.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @06:49PM
Social media is garbage, but so is pop psychology.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JNCF on Saturday April 11 2015, @07:46PM
Did you check out TFA? It's title is "5 reasons we can't handle marriage anymore," and it's an opinion piece written by a relationship columnist. This isn't a social scientist showing a clear correlation between divorce rates and social media usage, this is just some hack spouting her opinions. She doesn't link to a single source, and she ends it with "People can agree or disagree. I'm perfectly fine with that." I don't think her opinions have any more weight than random folks posting comments here.
I personally don't use any services that are commonly called social media (I could see making the argument that sites like SoylentNews fall under a broad definition of "social media," but this clearly isn't what we're talking about), and haven't for years. I'm thoroughly biased against it for a variety of reasons that aren't relevant here. I would be surprised if social media didn't have a negative impact on the length of monogamous relationships in our culture, but I'm extremely sceptical of claims that this is the main reason that monogamous relationships don't last as long as they used to.
I think we're in the middle of a rapid paradigm shift that dates back to at least the 1960s (really the free love movement of the 19th century). We now have an educated populace with ready access to birth-control, which means that promiscuous sex is a relatively safe past-time. Even if a child does result from sex (and is for some unthinkable reason allowed to come to term), welfare and alimony laws provide a financial safety net that hasn't historically been available to single parents. This makes female jealousy mostly outdated. Paternity tests make male jealousy mostly outdated. The stage is set for an end to the nuclear family, and monogamy, as we know it. We're just not quite there yet. We've got culture and genetics that tell us to be jealous, but if we continue to exist as a species those patterns will almost certainly change to meet the new paradigm. Attributing the destruction of monogamy primarily to social media seems totally absurd to me.
People can agree or disagree.
I'm perfectly fine with that.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @09:19PM
This is one area where African-American society is already decades ahead. The family structure, as understood in White, Hispanic and Asian America, hasn't existed within African-American culture for some time. In this culture, marriage is extremely rare. Single mothers are the norm. Not only are they single mothers, but they typically have children from at least 3 or 4 different men, and sometimes more. These men are typically referred to as "baby daddies", rather than "fathers", because their only involvement in the child's life is at the moment of insemination. Various levels of government then throw bundles and bundles of welfare money at these women, who often use this money to do everything (like buying expensive designer shoes and purses) except properly support their children. The culture you're talking about as if it were going to happen in the future is already here. It has been here for at least a couple of decades, if not longer. Maybe it isn't present within your particular homogenous, white suburb, but it's very real within the southern states of the United States, as well as in predominantly black areas of the nation's major cities.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @11:07PM
> but it's very real within the southern states of the United States, as well as in predominantly black areas of the nation's major cities.
Basically anywhere the government has been stuffing black men into prison such that they can't fulfil the role of father and breadwinner, behind bars or afterwards because of their record. It is no coincidence the change you've described began when the war on drugs started.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @11:22PM
These men don't just end up in jail spontaneously. They commit crimes, often very serious ones, and rightfully end up imprisoned for the criminal behavior they have engaged in.
Why the hell would you even think that men who have never held a legitimate job, who have engaged in various types of crime time and time again, and who have impregnated eight or more different women would ever voluntarily "fulfil the role of father and breadwinner"?
Enough with the obvious bullshit, please.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @12:20AM
Terrible crimes like putting certain substances into their own bodies. The horror!
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:47AM
When they're caught with drugs, it's usually a large amount. This is because these drugs are usually for resale, and not for their own personal use. In many cases they're selling these drugs to youth. That's a rather harmful thing to be doing, with an immense social cost.
The proportion of convictions due to drug-related offenses is actually proportionally small compared to convictions for other, much more serious offenses. We're talking about offenses like assault, rape, murder, theft and burglary. Many incidents will include more than one of those crimes, often affecting multiple victims.
You can't possibly pin this all on the government. It's not the government's fault that so many of these men repeatedly act so irresponsibly and so criminally.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @03:15AM
When they're caught with drugs, it's usually a large amount. This is because these drugs are usually for resale, and not for their own personal use.
Oh, no! Not selling drugs! We'd better involve government thugs!
In many cases they're selling these drugs to youth.
Please, no! Anything but the children!
As soon as someone brings up "children" in a discussion about liberties, you know they're authoritarians with an agenda. The drug war is wrong, and I care about adults as much as I do children, so that sort of nonsense won't sway me. If they want to risk taking drugs, then let them; it's a voluntary transaction, especially at first.
Many incidents will include more than one of those crimes, often affecting multiple victims.
And there are also many cases where they will, at first, be arrested for drugs, and then they'll become hardened criminals in jail/prison. Nice going.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @03:32AM
My, my, my. You are living in denial, and you pretend to be a Libertarian. My, my, my.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @04:02AM
Pretend? It's neither denial nor a game of pretend. I just don't see why authoritarians want to screw up relatively okay countries like the US and turn them into police states when places like North Korea already exist. Why not just move there?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by EQ on Saturday April 11 2015, @10:25PM
"and is for some unthinkable reason allowed to come to term" ... unthinkable? Really? What about the basic value of a human life - is that unthinkable? A lot of couples decide to keep their "accidents". I'm glad my folks did. And I kept my unplanned son too. Its not nearly as casual and cavalier a decision once you face it personally -- it can be agonizing. Choice? Yes, that's the law. But morally, there's far more to it than you seem to think, much too important to use such flippant language. Plus about half of the US population would disagree with you there (Pro Choice vs Pro Life split pretty evenly [gallup.com]). Pretty poor and overly broad assumption, and not even needed for you to make your point. Might want to check your biases.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @12:12AM
More like freedom vs anti-freedom. I don't like it, so I want government thugs to interfere with other people's personal matters to prevent *them* from doing it too!
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @06:42AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:43PM
Damn straight! It horrendous how I can't shoot that guy over there.
You must be in a pretty strange situation if some guy "over there" is actually inside your body. Or maybe he's not, making your example inappropriate and irrelevant to the subject of being able to control your own body.
Though, I did expect someone to reply with such authoritarian garbage, so thanks for being predictable.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday April 13 2015, @04:25PM
I was being a bit flippant for the sake of humor, and I am aware that my biases differ from the general population; I'd be embarrassed if they didn't.
Maybe we have radically different world views that lead us to different valuations of human life. I believe that humans are not fundamentally different than other animals. I understand that a fully functioning, developed human brain is better at some tasks than any other processor we have yet found or made. I also understand that a human embryo is less intelligent and aware than a fully developed pig by any reasonable measures. Since I don't attribute any metaphysical qualities to either animal, from my perspective factory farms seem way more grotesque than abortion clinics.
Most Americans eat pigs that have been kept in conditions we would all call "torture" if humans were being subjected to it. Do you eat pigs that have been tortured to death in factory farms? I won't get offended if you say yes. I won't even get offended if you flippantly joke about it. I understand that you probably have a totally different conception of pigs than I do, and I'm okay with that. I'm not trying to make you feel guilty about supporting the torture-market at all, I'm just using it as an example of something that you might casually brush off as unimportant while other parts of the population see it as a horrible tragedy. That's okay :)
I hope you have a wonderful day, and If you do eat pigs that have been tortured to death I hope they are delicious.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Saturday April 11 2015, @11:18PM
my guess is that women are not satisfied with regular guys and they all want some sports hero or GQ model looking guy. media has told them that they 'all deserve a prince charming' and very few guys meet that spec.
I think this is accurate, considering what I see on OKCupid. Most women absolutely demand a man who's at least 6 feet tall, even though that's probably about 5% of the male population. For a woman who's 5'11", that might be understandable, but I see this all the time from women who are 5'6". (As an aside, I'm over 6' tall, and it hasn't helped my dating life much over the years; what really attracts women IMO are very outgoing, gregarious men. Women want men who are just like, say, George Clooney, both tall and attractive, and also with a really charismatic and outgoing personality. So if you're male, being attractive and tall only goes so far; if you pair that with an introverted and shy personality, you're going to be lonely. By contrast, if you're female and very attractive, your personality really doesn't matter much; you'll have no trouble attracting quality men, just by looking nice and not acting like a bitch.)
same for guys, too; guys seem to want a perfect ten and very few women meet that spec.
One problem I see, here in the USA, is that there just aren't many attractive women over the age of 25. Too many people are fat, but it's much worse for women. It seems like men have a much easier time keeping their weight under control than women. It's well-known that men are very visual (much more than women), so combine that with most women looking terrible in this country and we have a problem. Personally I don't care much about having a perfect ten; a 6-9 would be fine, but most women are 1s and 2s, and I don't even want to bother; why would I date someone I don't find attractive in the least? This is a national problem, not a human problem; go to some other country like a Scandinavian country and there's lots of attractive women there, and very few obese people of either sex.
finding a mate is very hard unless you have built-in support systems like churches - and many of us could not care less about church attendance and membership.
This is another big problem in this country. It seems that women are far, far more religious than men, so the religious men have no trouble finding women they like, but the non-religious ones don't. The women are all hanging around in these stupid churches being fed a bunch of BS including "don't be unequally yoked" (meaning, don't date men outside the church), and men are all hanging around on online dating sites wondering why the male:female ratio is 5-to-1. Again, this is probably a national problem; over in Scandinavia I imagine religiosity is much lower for everyone.
(I know a lot of american guys have given up even trying to find an american girl to marry; they have gone outside the US to find a foreign girl, who is probably going to be less demanding, more loyal, have a longer term view towards things and does not have the disposable mentality that american women tend to have
They might also be going outside the US because then they can find a woman who doesn't weigh twice as much as him, doesn't demand he go to some weird Christian church where they demand he tithe 10% of his income and preach about how evil "the gays" are, how "the end times are upon us" and the Rapture is going to happen any day now, and how they should only watch Christian movies starring Kirk Cameron.
It doesn't help either that American women have all been taught from birth that they're "princesses" and deserve whatever they want.
In a nutshell, this country is fucked. I wonder how our friends in western Europe see this issue, or if it's totally different over there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @11:25PM
You need to have a big, thick cock, too.
Maybe your cock has insufficient length or girth?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 13 2015, @01:51AM
This is an obvious troll, but my cock is decently above-average, however this isn't going to affect my lack of dating success because so few women have gotten to see it. Unlike some bozos, I don't send women dick pics as soon as I exchange messages with them online. I'm quite sure my problem is my personality: I'm not outgoing, or a man who likes to drink a lot at bars and then get really loud and obnoxious. Women seem to love men like this. As I said before, it doesn't matter how good you look as a man, your personality is what attracts most women, and they like outgoing, gregarious, extremely confident men. That's why they get hooked up with assholes so much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @05:20PM
You make it sound like the grass is greener on the other side. Theres a thing called globesity. Caucasians the world over are turning into fatasses.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 13 2015, @01:59AM
Citation needed. I think that's BS; America has a particular problem with obesity, and so does Mexico (are those "caucasians"?). It's not that big a problem in Europe at all. Moreover, even here in the US it's not a problem everywhere; take a trip to Manhattan sometime and look around; good luck finding any obese people there. It seems obvious to me that when people are forced to walk a lot every day just to get around town, they end up being thinner than if they drive their Hummer everywhere.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday April 12 2015, @04:22AM
I'm an American who married a German. Our first-meeting / falling-in-love was a complete accident. Neither of us was specifically looking outside of our country. (I have to admit, the city I grew up in didn't have many prospects, though. Not many people held the same views, values, and interests I did.) As I learned about her culture, I figured out she wasn't a typical German either. Several Americans I've bumped into along the way seem to have similar stories. They were either curious about different countries and studied here then fell in love... or the job brought them here and fell in love. Of all of the people I've bumped into who have traveled internationally, none of them have said, "I want to marry a girl / guy who isn't American." If they married outside of the U.S., it wasn't by conscious choice. The non-Americans didn't go looking for Americans to marry either.
A bit off topic: One thing Americans should take note of is what happened yesterday. I had a bunch of friends over yesterday and they come from all over the world (five different countries that were not American). When the topic came up about visiting the U.S. and getting grilled by immigration, there was a lot of laughter from all of those parties about how fearful the Americans were of foreigners coming over and staying illegally. The common consensus was that America is not the place to go and raise your kid.
Back on topic: Americans may have the disposable view, but "typical Germans" have their fair share of problems too. Some very similar. Some very different.
I'm not an expert in these things. Far from it. Just offering my personal POVs also.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @08:41PM
I agree. This sounds like survivor bias to me.
Its like when you see a sweet 70s muscle car. Then some dumbass always says 'they dont make em like they used to'. THANK GOD. Most 60/70s cars are crap. All you see now are the ones that were actually built decently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias [wikipedia.org]
I remember hearing in the 70/80s that 40-50% of most marriages end in divorce. *WELL* before millennials. Marriage takes trust, compromise, and the ability to put up with someone who does the same thing every single day even though it drives you up the wall.
He does touch on one of the important aspects of keeping a marriage, trust. Social media does make it easier to be distrustful of others and break that trust. It also allows everyone to see it more explosively. Where as before it would happen outside of everyone's view so it seems more prevalent when in fact it may be the same.
Like you said stats are needed.